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As an anticipated 50,000 Muslims prepare to descend on Capitol Hill for “A Day of Islamic Unity” this Friday, several blogs and online news sources have spotlighted the history of the movement’s leader and his ties to terrorists in the U.S.
As WND reported, one of the key organizers is Hassen Abdellah, an attorney from Elizabeth, N.J. Abdellah formed part of the legal team that defended four men in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, including Mahmud Abouhalim, who was convicted and sentenced to prison.
During the trial, the New York Times described Abdellah as “by far the most aggressively combative of the lawyers in the case.”
The case, as well as Abdellah’s other legal associations, has raised eyebrows online.
“Who’s behind ‘Islam on Capitol Hill?’” asked popular blogger and frequent TV talk show guest, Michelle Malkin.
Malkin then quoted Andrew Walden of FrontPageMagazine.com, who published an extensive look at the Muslim rally’s organizers, including a reminder that Abdellah also defended Numan Maflahi, a man who in 2004 was accused by prosecutors of being tied to al-Qaida and sentenced to five years for lying to investigators during an investigation of terrorism financing.
“Of course, everyone is entitled to legal representation,” commented Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, “but Abdellah’s choice of clients is … interesting.”
Spencer also pointed out Abdellah represented Mahmud Faruq Brent, a Muslim cabdriver in Baltimore who pled guilty in April 2007 to attending a jihad terrorist training camp in Pakistan and conspiring to provide material support to the Lashkar-e-Taiba foreign terrorist organization.
Building on the Islamic interest in Obama’s inauguration, when Muslims claimed in a magazine that “It’s our time,” the event planners are calling for 50,000 Muslims to attend the event on the National Mall on Friday.
Repeated on each page of the rally’s website is the phrase “Our time has come.”
According to New Jersey’s Star-Ledger, Abdellah confirmed the idea of the event germinated after Obama’s inaugural speech, then was reinforced by the president’s address in Cairo, Egypt, months later.
In Cairo, Obama carried a greeting from “Muslim communities” in America, complained how Muslims had been “denied rights and opportunities,” and stated, “I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam at places like Al-Azhar that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s renaissance and enlightenment.”
Besides crediting Islam with significant responsibility for the development of civilization in Europe, Obama also said Muslims have served similarly in America.
“And since our founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States,” Obama said. “They have fought in our wars. They have served in our government. They have stood for civil rights. They have started businesses. They have taught at our universities. They’ve excelled in our sports arenas. They’ve won Nobel Prizes, built our tallest building and lit the Olympic torch. And when the first Muslim American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the same holy Quran that one of our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, kept in his personal library.”
“For the first time in my lifetime,” Abdellah told the Star-Ledger. “I heard someone of his stature speaking about Islam and Muslims not in an adversarial sense, but in the sense of being welcome and acknowledging we are integral citizens in the society – that we’re gainfully employed, we’re educated.
“He said he had his hand open to the Islamic world,” Abdellah said. “The Islamic world wants to open their hand and shake it.”
Now, the D.C. rally’s website proclaims its objective is to “invite the Muslim communities and friends of Islam to express and illustrate the wonderful diversity of Islam. We intend to manifest Islam’s majestic spiritual principals as revealed by Allah to our beloved prophet Muhammad (PEACE BE UPON HIM) of Arabia. Likewise, we intend to inspire a new generation of Muslim to work for the greater good of all people. We shall serve all people, regardless of race, religion or national origin.”
Scheduled events during the rally include offering Muslim youth tours of the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court and chanting the Athan on Capitol Hill.
The Athan, a Muslim call to prayer, contains several repeated refrains such as (loosely translated) “Allah is the greatest,” “I bear witness that there is no deity except Allah” and “I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.”
White House National Security Adviser James L. Jones says President Obama’s decision to abandon a long-range missile defense site in Eastern Europe was driven by U.S. intelligence concerns that Iran is further along than previously thought in developing medium-range missiles that could strike Western Europe and the Middle East with nuclear warheads.
“We think they are heading toward weaponiz[ing] these missiles, which obviously we want to dissuade them from doing,” the retired four-star Marine general told The Washington Times, explaining why U.S. officials dramatically shifted from years of focus on guarding against longer-range intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
Gen. Jones also acknowledged that the policy shift announced on Thursday will pay “an ancillary benefit” to U.S. efforts to improve relations with Moscow, taking issue with a statement by White House press secretary Robert Gibbs that the change was “not about Russia.”
“The fact is, there is clearly a relationship here in all of these issues,” he said. “We are trying to reset the relationship with Russia, based on one of mutual respect and mutual interest.”
In a wide-ranging interview Friday afternoon in his West Wing office, Gen. Jones said the government’s top national security leaders met about 50 times since March before unanimously agreeing to scrap a 2006 Bush administration plan to put 10 long-range, ground-based interceptor missiles in Poland and a related radar tracking site in the Czech Republic. They are to be replaced by ship-based radar and interceptors better able to protect Europe from shorter-range missiles, he said.
The key driver, he said, was intelligence showing that Iran is stressing development of medium- and intermediate- range missiles that could reach the Middle East or Western Europe and is focusing less on ICBMs with ranges greater than 3,500 miles that might one day reach the United States.
“We concluded, the intelligence community concluded and recommended that the previous threat estimates about Iran’s capabilities, vis-a-vis an ICBM, were not as imminent as we thought, which is to say the capability is further out,” Gen. Jones said.
“The intermediate-range capability of Iranian technology is higher than we thought, which puts Europe at risk and many of our friends in the Gulf at risk,” he said.
The new intelligence included a “pattern of Iranian testing and our observation of the tests, and the obvious range improvements they were getting, coupled with what we think is a plan to weaponize, maybe with nuclear warheads,” he added.
Gen. Jones did not elaborate on the types of missiles, but said that “what we’re talking about is the family of missile testing that allows us to conclude that it is the intermediate threat that is closer than we thought.”
The Air Force’s National Air and Space Intelligence Center stated in its annual report released in April that Iran has an “extensive missile development program” that includes the Shahab-3 and extended-range versions, as well as a new solid-fuel missile with a range of 1,240 miles enough to hit targets throughout Europe and the Middle East.
The report said Iran could have an ICBM by 2015.
However, two administration officials said the new intelligence is outlined in a May 2009 National Intelligence Estimate that concluded that Iran would not have a long-range missile before 2020.
U.S. estimates of missile threats have been of mixed reliability. In 1998, an intelligence assessment gauged that no nation outside the established nuclear powers would have a long-range missile by 2015. Shortly after the assessment, in August 1998, North Korea test-fired its first intercontinental-range Taepodong missiles.
While scrapping the Bush plan, the Obama administration wants to defend Europe by deploying Navy Aegis radar-equipped ships featuring Standard Missile-3 interceptors, which are less capable against long-range missiles but can stop medium-range missiles.
Less-capable radar will be deployed some place in the Caucasus region to replace the planned high-powered radar in the Czech Republic, which was troubled by a “public opinion problem,” Gen. Jones said.
A subsequent phase would include deploying a land-based version of the SM-3, possibly in Poland, and more advanced SM-3s, including future versions that can hit long-range missiles, over the next 10 years.
The new plan means that defenses against Iranian missiles can be in place throughout Europe six or seven years sooner than under the abandoned European plan, Gen. Jones said.
“This package is a much more, I won’t say nuanced, but phased approach that can be ramped up or ramped down any way we want, based on a new threat estimate,” he said.
Efforts by Iran to develop longer-range missiles would be detected, he said. “There’s not much the Iranians can do in terms of developing an ICBM that we won’t know about,” he said. “It just requires testing, and you can tell when they get into that envelope.”
Gen. Jones also said the new policy “factored in some geopolitical issues with regard to developing an emerging relationship, hopefully a good one, with the Russians,” as well as plans to “reinvigorate the strategic value of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.” Gaining Moscow’s cooperation in dealing with the “imminent threat from Iran” is one of the priorities for the administration, he added.
He said the new policy was reached “independent of how we think about the Russians” and was based on the right national security policies for the United States. But “an ancillary benefit to the solution set which we think is the right solution, regardless of how the Russians feel about it, was that we could in fact do something that the Russians considered to be important. But it wasn’t the driver by far.”
The focus on near-term threats of Iranian missiles “could also take off the table some of the things the Russians were concerned about, but without affecting our ability to reinforce Article Five of NATO and provide for territorial defense,” he said.
Critics of the Obama administration’s decision to cancel the European sites say it will be viewed as a concession to Moscow that may not be reciprocated.
Also, the new system is designed to defend Europe and the Middle East, but will not be capable of stopping a long-range Iranian missile fired at the continental United States.
“It appears to me the administration has made a risk assumption and they are willing to bet the Iranians will not develop a long-range-missile capability in the near future,” said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, former director of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency.
“If the Iranians fly a 4,000-kilometer-range missile in the next six months, we’re in trouble. We can’t handle that,” he said.
Gen. Obering said he views the new program as “rolling back” the earlier plan to deploy anti-ICBM interceptors in Poland.
“I see this as providing not as much defense, and it certainly can’t defend the United States,” he said.
The program also will include more technical risk because the more advanced versions of the SM-3 are “paper missiles” at this point and have not been tested.
Also, using less-capable radar, including sensors on unmanned aerial vehicles, will not be capable of identifying multiple warhead missiles, he said.
Eric Edelman, who was undersecretary of defense for policy in the Bush administration and who oversaw the 2006 missile-defense plan, said the new intelligence is questionable.
The National Air and Space Intelligence Center’s missile report indicated that Iran could deploy a long-range missile by 2015 five years before advanced SM-3s would be in place to defend against it.
“President Obama reiterated that unless the assessment changed, we should move forward [with long-range interceptors],” Mr. Edelman said in an interview. “What has changed? It seems to me the administration needs to clarify (in an unclassified or classified setting) what has led to the different assessment.”
The new plan also is expected to be widely viewed as “a preemptive concession to the Russians” that could have negative repercussions throughout NATO and especially in Central Europe, as well as among allies in the Gulf and Northeast Asia, including the untested new government in Japan, Mr. Edelman said.
“It would seem unwise to announce this move just as we are about to ‘engage’ the Iranians” in talks, he added.
As for the Russians, Mr. Edelman, now with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, said official statements from Moscow indicate that there may not be matching concessions from Russia.
However, news reports from Moscow said Friday that the Russian military will not go through with threats to deploy advanced short-range Iskander missiles in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, as threatened by Russian leader Vladimir Putin in response to the planned U.S. missile-defense site in Europe.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Saturday lashed out at critics of the new missile-defense plan and insisted it was not a concession to Russia. “I believe this is a very pragmatic proposal. I have found since taking this post that when it comes to missile defense, some hold a view bordering on theology that regards any change of plans or any cancellation of a program as abandonment or even breaking faith,” Mr. Gates, who served as defense secretary in the Bush administration, wrote in an opinion article for the New York Times, according to Reuters news agency.
Politically, the abandonment of the Europe site also set the stage for progress in reaching a new strategic arms agreement with Russia. Moscow vehemently opposed the European missile site as posing a threat to its strategic missile capability and had made canceling the program a precondition for arms talks.
The Bush administration then moved ahead with a limited missile-defense system of interceptors based at Fort Greeley, Alaska, and at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., accompanied by two other new systems: a Navy ship-based system deployed on Aegis battle-management-equipped warships and built on the SM-3, and a newer Army system called the Theater High-Altitude Area Defense.
Both the Aegis and THAAD are designed to hit the warheads from short- and medium-range missiles, like Iran’s Shahab-3.
Patriot anti-missile systems have been deployed by the United States and several allies for the past decade. The systems, however, were originally designed as anti-aircraft missile systems and were enhanced to provide limited capabilities against short-range missiles like the Scud.
The shift in missile-defense policy was signaled earlier this year when the Pentagon announced that it was cutting the number of planned long-range interceptors from 44 to 30 at the Alaska and California bases.
The iPhone application Twenty12 counts down the moments until the world’s destruction — just three years, 89 days, 13 hours and 15 minutes until Dec. 21, 2012.
That’s the date that the ancient Mayan Long Count calendar marked as the end of a 5,126-year era, resetting the date to 0 and signaling the end of humanity.
But today, as that date nears, doomsday chatter echoes across the Internet. The search term “Dec. 21, 2012″ produces 3,650,000 results on Google.
One Web site, december212012.com, declares itself “official” and is selling t-shirts announcing the end of the world is nigh.
And they aren’t the only ones cashing in. In November, two apocalypse-themed films open — “2012,” starring John Cusack and “The Road,” with Charlize Theron.
A whirlwind of interest in eschatology — the study of the end of times — has been escalating since the advent of the 21st century, according to Robert Thompson, professor of media and popular culture at Syracuse University.
“When we got to the millennium, people tended to get exorcized to mark the end of time,” he told ABCNews.com. “Then they boosted the Y2K scare and having people in authority, smart leaders, predict planes falling from the sky, no money in cash machines and breakdown of the electric grid. We lived with those headlines.”
But the “big 400-pound gorilla in the room” was 9/11, according to Thompson.
“We experienced the visual and cultural impact that day — a little dress rehearsal for the apocalypse, watching those buildings go down,” he said.
“Whenever there is a period of massive change, your mind tends to turn toward the end of days,” said Thompson. “Things change so quickly that you can’t even get a grip on Monday. History is out of control, like a boulder rolling down a hill. We are in those times.”
Some end-of-times zealots point to events like the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, as well as the near-collapse of world financial institutions in 2008. Pandemics like the growing swine flu are also cited as proof that the end is near.
But the Mayan predictions have held the most sway with believers.
At the height of that Mesoamerican civilization from 300 to 900 A.D., advanced mathematics and primitive astronomy flourished, creating what many have called the most accurate calendar in the world.
The Mayans predicted a final event that included a solar shift, a Venus transit and violent earthquakes.
Modern astronomy also confirms that on the winter solstice in 2012, the sun will be aligned with the center of the Milky Way for the first time in about 26,000 years.
Many point to similar end-of-times predictions among Native Americans, Chinese, Egyptians and even the Irish.
The prophecies of the Irish saint Malachy, the 12th century bishop of Armagh, have said there will be only one more pope after the current one, Pope Benedict XVI, and during his reign comes the end of the world.
From a Biblical standpoint, the apocalypse paints a nasty picture of what’s to come: natural disasters, a pandemic, asteroid impact, alien invasion, global warming, eco-system collapse, global conflict and divine intervention.
Christians look to Revelations, the last book of the Bible, written in 90 A.D. by John the Apostle, for details on the seven-year “tribulation”
“The world will not get better, but increasingly worse until the point of tribulation on Earth,” said end-of-times expert Pastor Phil Hotsenpiller.
“Halfway through that seven-year period, a leader with the mark of the “Beast” — 666 — will come to power,” he told ABCnews.com. “We will begin to see pestilence, war, climate changes, all leading up to the battle of Armageddon, where all the armies will face off for the final battle.”
In the judgment day that follows “tribulation,” non-Christians will be relegated to eternal hell and believers will leave the earth with God.
Hotsenpiller packs in avid fans at his end-of-times workshops at the Yorba Linda Friends Church in Orange County, Calif., an evangelical megachurch that includes former President Richard Nixon as one of its founding members.
With artist Rob Liefeld, he has published a series of graphic novels, the first of which is “Armageddon Now.” The book has already sold well and their company, 12 Gates Productions, is working on a CGI film based on the series.
Hotsenpiller reads current events from secular newspaper to his parishioners to illustrate that, “What we see today resonates.”
“When 10,000 people show up for a workshop on Labor Day, it tells you there’s a real interest in it,” he said.
While the pastor believes in the literal description of the apocalypse, he knows the Bible has “poetic language” and hasn’t yet seen any immediate signs of the world’s demise.
“No, the world won’t end in 2012,” said Hotsenpiller. “But we are pretty darn close.”
Even scientists may have some worries about the date, some say.
A 2008 report by the National Academy of Sciences “changed my life,” said Lawrence Joseph, author of “Apocalypse 2012.”
Joseph has worried about destructive solar storms that will be at their height at the winter solstice in 2012.
“The report said that the electric power grid was susceptible to solar blasts,” he told ABCNews.com. “They come as close to the Supreme Court of scientific opinion. It’s been an amazing validation of my work and my fears.”
In 1859, Earth was hit by “wild and spectacular” solar storms in the so-called Carrington event. According to Joseph, the radiation was displayed in the Northern Lights, which were visible as far as the equator, disrupting telegraphs and creating small fires.
“You could read by the glare of the blast,” he said.
Solar Storm Could Penetrate Magnetic Field
Now, he worries that a newly reported hole in the earth’s magnetic field will make it more vulnerable to the “billion-ton blast” of proton radiation.
“In the electrified society of today, a blast the same size as in 1859 would short out the electric grid and leave 130 million in the U.S. without electricity for months or even years,” said Joseph.
Such an outage would not just shut down the Internet, but also shut down fresh water pumps and fresh food refrigeration, and hamper law enforcement and telecommunications. “A couple of days would be challenging but livable,” he said. “But some say it would take four to 10 years to recover from such a megablast.”
Scientists recommend spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a network of registers, which might act like surge protectors to shield Earth against such an event.
“It’s not the money or technology that’s stopping us, it’s the political will,” Joseph said. “It’s a matter of when, not if. All I can suggest is that we pray.”
But Gary Baddeley, who included Joseph in his 2008 documentary, “2012: Science or Superstition,” wanted to get to the truth.
“I saw these books and films coming out, and they were doing well, but I thought they were really misleading and no one was focusing on the big picture,” he told ABCNews.com. “I knew the movie ’2012′ was coming out and they were going to take the date and run with the idea of the apocalypse, as a tidal wave crashes over the Himalayas in the opening scene. I knew it would spark a lot of anxiety and essentially misinformation.”
Instead, Baddeley heard from scientists and spiritualists who suggested seismic changes in the cosmos might lead to enlightenment, rather than disaster.
“Many end-of-times prophesies are being bandied about, and 2012 is a convenient date to glom on to, but it’s no more ominous than Y2K,” he said. “And if you go down to Mesoamerica and ask the modern Mayan what Dec. 21 means to you, it means tourism.”
Whether 2012 brings the end of the earth or the Age of Aquarius is anyone’s guess. But culture critic Thompson said upheaval makes one wonder.
“Human beings have spent a good portion of civilization looking over their shoulders for the end to come,” he said. “Horrible things could happen in 2012 or tomorrow. Life is so unpredictable, and we have incredibly sophisticated weapons in the world we live in. There are lots of bad things.”
The average British man or woman has slept with 2.8 million people — albeit indirectly, according to figures released on Wednesday to promote awareness of sexual health.
A British pharmacy chain has launched an online calculator which helps you work out how many partners you have had, in the sense of exposure to risk of sexually transmitted diseases (STIs).
The “Sex Degrees of Separation” ready reckoner tots up the numbers based on your number of partners, then their previous partners, and their former lovers, and so on for six “generations” of partners.
The average British man claims to have actually slept with nine people, while women put the figure at 6.3, giving an average of 7.65.
“When we sleep with someone, we are, in effect, not only sleeping with them, but also their previous partners and their partners’ previous partners, and so on,” said Clare Kerr, head of sexual health at Lloydspharmacy.
“It’s important that people understand how exposed they are to STI’s with every partner.”
The unidentified Year Five child left school as a boy and returned the next day as a girl, in female uniform with a ponytail tied in pink ribbon.
The case comes after reports a 12-year-old boy had started secondary school as a girl.
Both children are too young to have had a sex change operation or hormone therapy as this is only given to people aged 18 or over.
There was a mixed reaction from gender experts.
A spokesman for transgender group the Beaumont Society said: “This child is vulnerable to bullying and teasing. They and their family have been seriously misadvised. It is hard enough for an adult to change gender. To go to the extent that this nine-year-old has gone is unique.”
But James Caspian, who counsels people on gender issues, said: “People should not be surprised that a child so young has these feelings.
“What is more of a surprise is that the child has been able to express them openly and that because of changes in society those around the child have been so supportive.”
The mother of a boy at the same school as the nine-year-old told The Sun newspaper: “My son came home from school and asked why one of his friends had become a girl.
“I thought he was joking, but he kept asking… that’s when alarm bells began ringing.
“The pupil’s classmates were told he had left and that a new girl would be starting in his place this term.”
Children were initially told the boy had left and a new girl had arrived, but at a special assembly the head teacher, class teacher and the pupil’s special needs teacher appeared to realise the child would be recognised.
The mother said: “They were told the new girl would be using the girls’ toilet and that no one should tease or bully her. If anyone saw the new girl being bullied they should stick up for her.
“My son is too young to really understand the significance of what’s happening. It’s hard to explain to him. I’m terrified he’ll ask me if he can become a girl as well.”
A school source said the boy had “always been rather feminine” and a decision had been taken to support the child and family “after his case was confirmed by five doctors”.
Parents who criticised the school and child’s parents on a social networking website were warned by police they could be prosecuted for harassment.
Atheist and religious skeptic student groups are on the rise across the country’s high school and college campuses.
The Secular Student Alliance added its 160th affiliate campus group last week and reports that demand for their group starting packets are high.
“It’s been a challenge to keep up with the demand for services, especially group-starting packets and follow-up,” said Lyz Liddell, senior campus organizer, in a statement earlier this month. “That’s a nice problem to have.”
The number of SSA campus affiliate groups has increased from 100 in 2008 to 160 this year. In 2007, the alliance counted only 80.
Kirk Wilcox, president of the Non-Religious, Atheist, Free Thinker and Agnostic Alliance, told Central Michigan University’s student newspaper Central Michigan Life that he’s not surprised.
“Over the years, it’s become more acceptable – people should be proud of who they are,” he said. “If you want to be a Christian and go to church, that’s fine, but there should be institutions for people who aren’t religious.”
More Americans are claiming no religion and many have taken on more outspoken and public campaigns. According to the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey, 15 percent of Americans are part of the non-religious population, or “nones,” up from 8.2 percent in 1990.
SSA, meanwhile, provides a social network for students who are seeking an alternative to campus religious ministries, the alliance says.
It may look a little precarious and uncomfortable to ride, but Honda believe their new ‘personal mobility’ device could one day be zipping up and down our streets.
The vehicle looks like a very modern unicycle and to ride it you simply lean your weight in the direction you want to go, whether that’s forward, backwards or even sideways. It maintains its own balance travelling up to 3.7MPH.
The U3-X, which was given a test-run by reporters in Japan today, was designed to be small, safe and unobtrusive enough to mingle with pedestrians or use indoors, according to Honda Motors.
The single wheel on the U3-X is made up of many tiny motor-controlled wheels, packed inside the bigger wheel, allowing the device to swerve in any direction.
Unfortunately Honda President Takanobu Ito said the machine was still ‘a proposal,’ and the company has no sales plans, pricing or firm ideas on where or how it will be used.
The U3-X weighs just under 22 pounds, runs on a full charge for an hour, and has a lithium-ion battery. It is best suited to those over 5ft.
Although Honda said the machine is meant for the elderly, it’s unclear whether they would be coordinated enough to control the device.
Honda makes the Asimo walking child-shaped robot and the U3-X uses some of the same technology.
Last year, Honda also unveiled a gadget that can support a wearer’s bodyweight, made of mechanical frames attached to a pair of shoes.
Japanese rival Toyota Motors has shown machines that help people get around, including the Winglet, similar to the Segway, a scooter-like device that people ride standing up.
Japan is one of the most rapidly aging societies in the world, and concerns are growing about helping the elderly get around.
‘Honda engineers are always thinking about people’s dreams and wishes about mobility. We will continue to work hard to be a leader in that area,’ Mr Ito said.
The CCTV technology identifies suspicious individuals and behaviour and then acts to stamp out crimes before they happen.
When a crime looks like it is going to occur, the system will verbally warn the perpetrator and then if necessary alert the nearest police officer.
ISIS, short for Integrated Sensor Information System, is being developed by a team at Queen’s University Belfast at its Centre for Secure Information Technologies.
It is designed to work with the extensive network of CCTV cameras already installed on buses and trains as well as in stations, airports and on the street.
It centres on specially developed “computer vision technology” that analyses images picked up by CCTV and is able to profile individuals to see if they pose a risk and then to check for patterns of behaviour that may be suspicious or anti-social.
The computer constantly assesses the situation and if it becomes a major risk alerts a control room who can send out a verbal warning or alert officers nearby to stampout crimes before they occur.
Criteria that ISIS will look for are likely to include clothing such as hooded tops, sudden movements, odd behaviour such as moving seats and verbal aggression.
Metal detectors, motion detectors and even microphones could eventually be added to sharpen the system further.
“We have four million cameras across the country at present but their impact on anti-social behaviour is actually fairly negligible,” said Dr Paul Miller, who is part of the 50-strong team.
“We aim to develop a system which helps to make crime-free buses, trains, stations and airports a reality. We think it will be a strong deterrent.”
The science fiction film Minority Report, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Cruise, revolves around a “Pre-crime” police unit that is able to identify and prevent crimes before they happen.
Its vivid colour is clearly designed to appeal to youngsters. But this watch is really aimed at their parents.
For its key selling point is a satellite positioning system that locates the wearer to within ten feet.
The makers claim the GPS tracking device will offer anxious parents peace of mind and allow children the independence to go out to play on their own.
But critics have said the ‘tagging’ is a step too far in the climate of paranoia over child safety.
The num8 watch, costs £149.99 and can be securely fastened to a child’s wrist, triggering an alert if forcibly removed.
Parents will be able to see their child’s location on Google maps by texting ‘wru’ to a special number, or clicking ‘where r you’ on the secure website linked to the device.
The street address and postcode will be displayed.
Safe zones can also be set up in which children can play. An alert will be sent to the parents if the child strays out of that area.
Steve Salmon, of makers Lok8u, said: ‘Losing your child, if only for a brief moment, leads to a state of panic and makes parents feel powerless.
The overriding aim of num8 is to give children their freedom and parents peace of mind.’
But Dr Michele Elliott, director of children’s charity Kidscape, said: ‘Is the world really that unsafe that parents need to track their children electronically? I don’t think so.’
It’s a simple concept, really: You inject a miniature radio frequency identifier the size of a grain of rice between your thumb and forefinger and, with a wave of your hand, unlock doors, turn on lights, start your car or pay for your drinks at an ultrachic nightspot.
The problem is, the whole concept is a little geeky for most of us, nauseating for some, Orwellian for a few and even apocalyptic for a smattering of religious fundamentalists.
Forget the science of it — and yes, it does work remarkably well. Forget the convenience of it. Forget that similar identifying technologies, from bar codes to mag stripes, overcame similar obstacles and are now ubiquitous.
Radio frequency ID implants face a hurdle the others did not: ickiness.
“There is sort of an icky quality to implanting something,” says Rome Jette, the vice president for smart cards at Versatile Card Technology, a Downers Grove, Ill., card manufacturer that ships 1.5 billion cards worldwide a year.
How RFID devices work
The RFID technology is un-yucky, however. The implanted tag — a passive RFID device consisting of a miniature antenna and chip containing a 16-digit identification number — is scanned by an RFID reader. Once verified, the number is used to unlock a database file, be it a medical record or payment information. Depending upon the application, a reader may verify tags at a distance of 4 inches up to about 30 feet. More from MSN Money
The RFID implant has been around for more than 20 years. In its earliest iteration, it provided a convenient way to keep track of dogs, cats and prized racehorses. Few took note or voiced much concern.
Then, in 2002, Applied Digital Solutions (now Digital Angel) of Delray Beach, Fla., deployed to its foreign distributors a beta version of its patented VeriChip technology for human use. Two years later, the VeriChip became the first subcutaneous RFID chip to receive FDA approval as a Class 2 medical device.
One VeriChip distributor in Spain sold the concept to the ultratrendy Baja Beach Club, which offered its patrons in Barcelona and Amsterdam the option of having an implant inserted in their upper arms to pay for their drinks without having to carry wallets in their swimsuits.
‘Mark of the beast’?
Web sites sprouted like mushrooms, accusing VeriChip of being the biblical “mark of the beast” predicted in the Book of Revelations as a foreshadowing of the end of the world.
CEO Scott Silverman was equally vilified as being tied to Satan or, worse, Wall Street. Big Brother was surely coming, though he’d have to get pretty close to read your implant. Claims that the tags cause cancer based on lab rat tests upped the amps of outrage.
Were people suddenly curious about RFID implants?
Curiosity is probably an understatement,” Silverman concedes. “People have always taken interest in VeriChip. Part of the lore and part of the trouble of this company over the past five years has been just that.”
Though VeriChip played no part in using its implant as a payment device, the company quickly moved to calmer waters. Today, it markets its VeriMed Health Link patient identification system to help hospitals treat noncommunicative patients in an emergency. Its future may include more advanced medical applications, including a biosensor system to detect glucose levels.
“A lot of the negative press that we received was a direct result of people having a misconception of what this technology is all about,” says Silverman. “We believe that the medical application was and still is the best application for this technology.
“That said, if and when it does become mainstream and more patients are utilizing it for their medical records or for diagnostic purposes, if they want to elect to use it for other applications, certainly they’ll be able to do that. But it’s going to take a company much larger than us to distribute the retail reader end of it into the Wal-Marts of the world.”
Versatile’s Jette has watched contactless RFID battle for acceptance in the credit card arena. Just as Silverman suggests, the dynamics and scale of the payment industry tends to work against widespread deployment.
“Mobil Speedpass tried to do it; they got some traction and decided to see if there was any mileage to take this to a Walgreens or McDonald’s. You used to be able to use your Speedpass at McDonalds, but that ended because, at the end of the day, you still only have two gigantic payment processors out there, Visa and MasterCard,” he says. “To me, the idea of any kind of payment device having ubiquity requires an awful lot of back-end cooperation, of people willing to say, ‘I don’t need my brand in the customer’s wallet.’”
Although the coolness factor is effective from a marketing standpoint — American Express Blue with its smart (if largely unused) chip is a good example — Jette says most cardholders would balk at the very thought of a needle.
“With the implanting in the nightclubs, there is a cache of exclusivity there, especially among a certain demographic where people are piercing themselves and getting tattoos. But those are things that really only 20-somethings do a lot. I really doubt that there will be any market for injectable RFID tags or even any single point-of-sale payment device.”
“A lot of times, the technology is a solution looking for a problem. Sometimes people fall in love with the technology for its own sake and then try to evangelize a home for it. My business group is just smart cards, and I never forget that although we make money with smart cards, the bills are paid with mag stripe cards. As backwards and old-fashioned as they are, that is still the bulk of what the transactions are going to be in America for a very long time.”
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